Ginny Weasley and the Methods of Rationality
by XNecateX
Summary: This is a continuation fanfiction of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It will cover the events of Harrys second year in Hogwarts from the perspective of Ginny Weasley, who is in her first year. All chapters will be available as drafts on reddit/r/HPMOR before I post them here. So if you want to help me correct my chapters check them out there.
1. A Day of Rather High Probability

*Millions of eyes are watching*

*A hand is raised*

*Red light flashes and someone whispers a word*

As Ginny Weasley woke one morning from uneasy dreams, she found herself in her bed, transfigured into a gigantic insect-like creature.

I will kill Fred and George, she thought.

How dare they do this on my first day of Hogw…

Then her alarm clock rang and she actually woke up. After she had checked that she was not an insect, but a perfectly normal eleven year old girl, she relaxed a bit.

This was not the first time she experienced such a false awakening. In fact, it had happened quite often ever since she read about lucid dreaming in one of these muggle books her father collected and started practising it. But it was still scary. However she was sure that it was worth it. The book said you could practise movements while dreaming and considering what she knew about the process of learning spells that would really come in handy.

She continued to let her mind wander and started to think about Hogwarts. For as long as she could remember some of her older brothers went off to Hogwarts in early September. First only Bill and Charlie, then Percy, Fred and George, and finally Ron. But this year she would not be left behind. She had bought her wand and her schoolbooks in Diagon Alley the day before and would finally start to learn magic. But the prospect of learning magic wasn't even the most exciting part. The thing she looked forward to the most was meeting Harry Potter. He was so awesome. He defeated the Dark Lord as a child and her brother told her about all the things he did during the army battles of the last Hogwarts year. And there had even been an article in the Quibbler that he was involved in the defeat of the Dark Lord, after he rose again last summer. Although the story was quite strange, it basically said that Harry Potter was David Monroe pretending to be Harry Potter, and though the Quibbler was not the most reliable source of information, she was sure that Harry had saved them all again.

She did not know when she had fallen in love with Harry Potter. She was not sure how this could have happened, considering that she never met him before, but she just felt that they were meant to be together in the end no matter what might happen in between. She was still thinking about Harry when she heard a voice from downstairs.

"GINEVRA WEASLEY," her mother screamed. She sounded like someone trying to impersonate a howler.

"Hurry, your eggs are getting cold and we're going to miss the train."

Realising how much time had passed since the alarm clock rang, she jumped out of her bed, dressed and went downstairs.

The other Weasley family members were already sitting at the table and were halfway through their breakfast when she arrived. Percy was lecturing Fred and George on how they had to work harder this year, as their OWLs were coming up next year and they would need to start getting their things together now, if they wanted to have any chance in passing them. Ron was telling his father that he was sure that he would be the general of an army this year and began explaining his strategy for the first battle. Ginny was not convinced. She liked her brother and he was quite good at chess, so he had to be a good strategic thinker, but she still could not imagine him competing with the likes of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.

Before she sat down she let her mother perform the body cleaning charm on her. A couple of seconds later she felt clean and refreshed and began eating her toast. She was thinking again about how grateful she was that she lived in a wizarding family. She knew that muggles had to spend quite a lot of time in the shower every morning in order to get clean. She had seen such a device in the storage room where her father kept all the Muggle artefacts he was so obsessed about and the thought of having to step into it and let it spill water over her head every morning was not very pleasant. It would take hours for her long thick hair to dry and she would probably catch a cold if she had to go outside with wet hair. She knew that there were showers In Hogwarts, for the muggleborns who could not get used to magical cleaning. And she heard that even some wizard born children actually used them though she could not understand why.

"Finish your food, we have to leave," said Molly.

"Mum, why can't we take the floo network", asked Ginny.

"I told you, they started charging money for using the floo office at Kings Cross on the first day of Hogwarts. You remember how much of a mess it was with so many people arriving there at the same time. There were even frequent accidents with people bumping into each other if someone left the fire too slow. Now it is going to be much more pleasant for the people who can still afford it. Sadly we do not belong to those people. We are going to take the car. Be glad that your father managed to acquire such a thing and we don't have to use the public muggle transport like two years ago".

Ginny was indeed glad about that. They had been out of floo powder at that time and Ginny remembered public muggle transport as beeing incredibly unreliable. She really did not want to be late to the train for her first trip to Hogwarts.

A couple of hour later the Weasley family was standing at Kings Cross station in front of the wall between Platform nine and platform ten, waiting for a moment when no Muggles were watching to pass through the wall to platform 9 ¾. Ginny had always been wondering why the platform was called 9 ¾ and not 9 ½ but no one had been able to explain it to her. So she just accepted that most of her fellow wizards were not really good with numbers. She had always liked numbers and taught herself a bit of maths with a textbook from her father's muggle library. Sometimes she thought it might not have been too bad to go to receive some basic muggle education, although most of the things muggles learned were useless if you could do magic. She had even asked her parents once, if she could visit a muggle school, since she had nothing better to do with her time, besides sitting at home and waiting until she was finally old enough to go to Hogwarts, but her father's love for muggles had not extended so far as to allow his daughter to be taught by one.

After a few minutes all of them had managed to pass through the wall unseen and were now standing in front of the Hogwarts express. Since they were already quite late there was no time for long farewells and they immediately boarded the train. A few seconds later her brothers had all left, looking for their friends from school and leaving her behind. She was quite happy with that because she was also looking for somebody. She pulled her trunk past several compartments until she finally found the one she was looking for. Inside it sat a boy with black hair and a lightning scar on his head. To Ginnys surprise and her delight he was alone. Hermione Granger, who, as her brothers told her, was usually with him, was nowhere to be found. Harry looked up from his book as she entered the compartment and said:

"Hi, I'm Harry Potter-Evans-Verres, but I'm sure you already know that, since everyone in the wizarding world seems to. Judging from your look you are probably a Weasley, most likely the little sister Fred and George told me about. Ginny was the name, right?"

Ginny was paralyzed. She usually found it easy to relate to people and was quite talkative but the fact that Harry Potter knew that she existed, even knew her name was too much for her to take. Her head turned as red as her hair and she stood in the compartment door in complete silence.


	2. Nerve Issues

A few seconds later Ginny still had not said a word.

"You seem to be experiencing some kind of glossophobia, does that happen to you often? You can nod if you cannot talk," asked Harry.

Ginny had not understood a word of what Harry said. She showed no reaction at all, only her head turned even redder.

"Ah, my mistake, said Harry. "Of course you don't know the technical term. Do you usually find it difficult to talk to people?"

Ginny shook her head.

"Then it seems to me that I am somehow a very important person for you, and you are experiencing glossophobia because you're afraid to say something wrong. The easiest way to fix that would probably be if I showed you that I am a completely normal person like you, and there is no reason to be afraid. However, I find acting like a normal 12 year old to be very annoying, so we can disregard that solution. Another way would be to find out the deeper reasons behind your nervousness, but I don't think I have enough practice in psychology to do that. So let's try this: Stand up straight, spread your arms and legs a bit and breathe deeply."

Ginny did as Harry had told her, and after a few seconds she really started to feel a bit more comfortable. She continued standing silently for a while and then said, "Thank you, that really helped."

"You have just tricked your subconscious mind," Harry said. "By showing body language signs of confidence, you actually feel more confident. By the way, you still haven't told me if my guess was right. Are you Ginny Weasley?"

"Yes I am," she replied.

"OK, Ginny, then why have you come to this compartment? Did you want to speak with me?"

Ginny again fell silent. She realised that she had not thought her first meeting with Harry Potter through very well. Actually her plan had only extended so far as to open the compartment door and step inside. In retrospect she felt quite stupid for that, but couldn't change it now, so she just said, "I was looking for a place to sit and all the other compartments were full." Although she did not think it sounded very convincing.

"In that case, just have a seat. You can put your trunk on the other bench next to mine. There's no need to lift it up to the storage space. I doubt that more people will come to sit here. Most people who know me avoid spending too much time with me, because spending time with me tends to make your life surreal."

"Won't Hermione Granger be coming?" asked Ginny. "I mean, isn't she your girlfriend?"

"I don't know who told you that, but she is not my girlfriend and if you ever hear that rumour again, please tell me who spread it; I would like to give that person a visit. Hermione won't be in Hogwarts the first couple of days; she has something else to do."

Ginny had only half paid attention to what Harry had said after he denied that Hermione was his girlfriend. At that point she felt a sudden rush of joy. She had always expected Hermione to be an obstacle that she would have to get out of the way first, before having a shot with Harry. This would make things a lot easier. However, there was still the problem that she was extremely nervous around him. Before she could think any further on how to fix that issue, Harry interrupted her thoughts.

"Excuse me for being this direct, I just don't see the point of not mentioning the obvious, just because it might hurt someone's feelings. If we all spent less time on protecting other people's feelings and more on saying what we actually think, then there would be a lot fewer misunderstandings in human communication. I don't believe that you entered this compartment by chance. Your behaviour shows that you clearly knew who I am, so I guess you wanted to meet me. Is that correct?"

Ginny had known that her excuse was not really believable, and that someone as smart as Harry would of course see through it, so there was no point in denying it. So she replied, "Yes."

"May I ask you why you wanted to meet me? Is it just because I'm famous? Do you want an autograph?"

Ginny thought carefully about her reply. She would have loved an autograph from Harry but she did not think that asking for one now would be very helpful to her plans with him. She thought about what he had said about how telling the truth made human communication easier, and briefly considered confessing her love to Harry, but that did not seem wise at this point either. So she answered: "Fred and George told me a lot about you, and I thought you would be an interesting person to meet."

"That seems reasonable to me," replied Harry. "I am indeed an interesting person." He sounded rather pleased with himself.

"The question is, are you an interesting person? I would ask you to pitch to me, why I should be interested in getting to know you. But you still seem quite nervous around me, so that test would probably not give good results. Your nervousness will fade with time and it doesn't tell me anything about whether you're an interesting person or not. If you want to test if someone is fit for a job, you should test skills that are actually required for the job. That's something that muggles get wrong a lot."

"What exactly do you mean by that?", asked Ginny. She had inherited part of her father's curiosity about the muggle world and, since it played an important role in Harry's life, she thought it was a good idea to know more about it."

"Look at the process of how muggles in Britain choose their leaders for example. The key skill you've got to have is persuasion. Less and less people seem to actually care about what you want to do after you get elected. They elect you based on things like charisma and rhetorical skills. The correlation between those things and the ability to make good decisions for a country is not that strong. Of course, it is still higher than the correlation between being born into a Noble and Most Ancient House and being an able leader, so muggle governments are in general more competent than the Wizengamot, but still there would be better ways to choose a leader."

"OK, I think I understand," said Ginny.

"Great, than we can proceed with the friend casting thing. You don't have to be nervous, what I've heard from you so far is already relatively promising, and I have a good record of casting my friends in the Hogwarts Express. I'm just going to ask you some questions. Let me start with this one: what do you think about Quidditch?"

Ginny had not expected that. Ron always told her that Harry Potter hated Quidditch, and once threatened to destroy it. She felt the nervousness creeping back into her brain and sabotaging her ability to form proper thoughts. She repeated the techniques Harry had shown her earlier and, when she felt calm again, she replied: "I quite like watching it. I would also like to play, but my brothers never let me."

For a quarter of a second Harry seemed to look a bit disappointed, but then his face went back to a neutral expression. She thought that it might have been a better idea to deny that she liked Quidditch, but it was too late for that now.

"What position would you like to play if you could choose?"

Ginny did not know which answer Harry wanted to hear so she answered honestly: "I think I'd like being a chaser the most."

"Why not the seeker? That is the most important player."

"I think I just like being really involved in the game. Of course the seeker is more important, but I don't think it's that much fun to fly around alone doing nothing until you see the snitch. The chaser is just more a part of the team."

That seemed to please Harry, and Ginny thought that she had gotten the answer right this time.

"Then what would you say if I told you that the snitch completely ruins Quidditch, since catching it makes everything else that happened during the game irrelevant in most cases?"

At first Ginny was shocked by this statement. The snitch was an important part of Quidditch, it had been part of the game for more than a thousand years, but what Harry said actually made sense. It happened maybe once a year that a professional Quidditch game was decided by anything other than who got the snitch. That was mostly if a top tier team played against a bad one, and the seeker of the bad team caught the snitch. But with two teams of equal strength it almost never happened that one managed to score over 15 goals more than the other team. Especially as Quidditch matches grew shorter and shorter, with the racing brooms getting better.

"You're absolutely right; the snitch kind of ruins the game. I can't believe that I never noticed that on my own." She was surprised to realise that she had not said this because she knew it was the answer Harry wanted to hear, but that she actually believed it.

"It's a lot harder spotting mistakes like that if everyone around you doesn't see them," said Harry. "It takes training, and wizards usually don't have that training. Although I have hope that this might change quite soon. You admitted that your belief about how Quidditch should be was wrong. Admitting that you are wrong is one of the most important skills of a rationalist. You passed the test."

Ginny smiled as she heard the good news and then she asked: "Ehm, Harry, what is a rationalist?"

"Rationalist strive to acquire accurate beliefs about the world around them, and uses those beliefs to make good decisions and maximise their utility."

"And how does that work? I mean, how do you get accurate beliefs about the world?"

"You perform experiments and measure the results. And you can read books written by people who already performed experiments before you. That is actually the faster way for most things. At least, things that don't concern magic. If you don't have to repeat experiments that were already done, you have more time to test things that are actually new. I am sure that you are still a bit confused by this. It is very unintuitive for wizard born children and even for a lot of muggles. But I expect you to understand it after a while in Hogwarts."

"Do you really think so? My brothers never mentioned that they learned anything like that in Hogwarts."

"Well, you plan to spend time with me. And people who spend time with me usually learn a thing or two about rationality."

"I'll be spending time with you? I thought you wanted to test me first, before you decided on that."

"Well, by asking you questions I cannot truly find out whether I would like to be your friend. The only thing I can find out quite easily is if you fulfil any K.O. criteria that prevent me from being able to enjoy spending time with you. I hadn't made a list of such criteria when I asked you the first question, so I just tried to test the first one that came into my mind. And now that I've thought about it, I've come to the conclusion that I only have one criterion. Friends of mine have to be able to admit when they are wrong, because otherwise it is impossible to have an intelligent conversation with them. You showed that you can do that. I hereby officially declare you my friend. On probation of course, I still don't know nearly enough about you to make a final decision on the topic."

To this Ginny said nothing. She just sat there and smiled. She had never been happier than that in her entire life.

 **Authors notes**

This chapter was a bit of a filler chapter, but I hope you still liked it. In the next chapter you'll find out how the setting for my Hogwarts will look like. It will go online on Sunday the 31th of may.


	3. Shock Therapy

Ginny entered the great hall together with the other first year students. After spending a very enjoyable time with Harry, they had been divided after the train reached Hogwarts. She had to cross the lake with Hagrid, the gamekeeper of Hogwarts, and the other first years, while Harry went to the self-moving carriages that took the older students to the castle. She had wondered why the first years had to go to the castle separately from the other students and assumed that this was probably one of those ancient traditions which no one knew the purpose of anymore.

The flock of first years came to a halt between the Head Table and the four House tables. In front of the Head Table stood a chair with an old hat on it. She knew that this was the sorting hat, which had sorted countless generations of wizarding children into the four Houses of Hogwarts. It would soon sort her as well. Although finding out which House of Hogwarts would be hers was an important event with huge influence on her future life, she was not nervous. After all, she could not change the hat's decision anyway. She hoped to be sorted into Ravenclaw so she would see Harry more often, but she expected to end up in Gryffindor as everyone of her family did before her. She looked towards the Staff Table again and saw that Professor McGonagall had left her Chair and was now standing in front of a podium.

"Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall. "I know all of you first years are very excited to be finally sorted into your houses, but the head of House Slytherin has insisted on talking to you before the sorting. Therefore, I will introduce you to our new staff members first, and then give them the chance to say a few words if they like. First of all, you might have already guessed that I am the new Headmistress of Hogwarts. I will replace Albus Dumbledore, who is currently unable to be here with us." Her voice sounded weary and sad as she said the last sentence.

Ginny was quite confused. The Prophet had proclaimed that Albus Dumbledore was dead. Killed by Lord Voldemort before David Monroe was able to stop him. Of course they had not found a body, but Dumbledore disappearing on the same day of the Voldemort incident was very unlikely a coincidence. However, Professor McGonagall seemed to believe that he was still alive.

"Professor Snape also left us last year and will be replaced by Horace Slughorn." Ginny had heard a bit about Slughorn. He had been her parents' potions teacher. They did not really like him as he favoured people with influential relatives or outstanding skills and they had had neither. Ginny was not sure what to think about him, but if half the things she heard about Snape were true, he would be an improvement.

After the applause (mostly from the Slytherin table) had ended, Professor McGonagall started to speak again: "Also, as usual, we needed a new Defence Professor. I am glad to announce that we were able to recruit a well-known fighter of evil powers for this position. Please welcome Professor Gilderoy Lockhart." At the Staff Table, Gilderoy Lockhart appeared and put the invisibility cloak under which he had hidden on the desk. This explained a lot. Ginny had to buy all of Lockhart's books for this semester. She had assumed that the new defence teacher was a fan of Lockhart, but she had never expected that it would be Lockhart himself. The applause was much louder than it had been for Slughorn and Ginny could understand why. Gilderoy Lockhart really was famous. He was probably the third most prominent enemy of dark wizards and creatures after Harry Potter and David Monroe. If anyone could replace Monroe as a defence teacher, it was probably him. Besides that, he was really handsome, and half of magical Britain's female population fancied him.

After the applause had finally stopped, Lockhart said with a magically enhanced voice:

"I am sorry that I had to deprive you of my sight with an invisibility cloak until now, but I knew that you would never have been able to concentrate on the headmistress's speech with me sitting at the table, and you thinking that this might be the only chance to get an autograph. But now you know that there will be plenty of time for that this year, please continue to pay attention to Professor McGonagall. Although she might not be a renowned fighter of dark magic and five time winner of the Witches Weekly Most Charming Smile Award like me, her words are of some value for you."

Lockhart sat down again and the Headmistress continued with her speech. "Thank you for your kind words Gilderoy," she said with a very polite tone. "As some of you might have realised, there is another face missing at the Staff Table. Professor Trelawney is no longer a teacher at Hogwarts because her subject, Divination, has been removed from the Hogwarts curriculum. Our last new staff member will now explain why this has happened and what he will be teaching instead of Divination."

The hall went silent as everyone was confused about what they had just heard. People were looking around so see were the new Professor, who was not at the table yet, would come from. Somewhere behind her, Ginny heard a chair moving. She turned around and saw that a person had stood up from the Ravenclaw table and was now moving towards the podium. It took her and everyone else a few seconds to realise what had just happened.

There was a sudden silence in the hall.

All conversation stopped.

All eyes turned to stare.

Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres walked slowly and with a calm expression, completely ignoring the confused looks everyone gave him. It seemed to take ages until he finally reached the podium. He stopped there, pointed his wand at himself and said "Sonorus." A few seconds later, his magically enhanced voice filled the great hall of Hogwarts.

"I think most of you are probably confused by what has just happened. So let me explain it to you. First, let's talk about Divination. I am actually completely stunned how this subject can have survived for more than a thousand years. It's stupid even by wizards' standards. It makes less sense than the snitch. No one can learn to make prophecies. You are either born a seer or not. And even seers cannot deliberately make prophecies. They make them at completely random times. Things taught in Divination are not part of the process of making a prophecy, and there is no evidence that studying Divination increases the chance that a seer makes a prophecy in any way."

Ginny was stunned by this statement. It was so obvious that she wondered how more than thirty generations of wizards could have missed that fact. She seriously reconsidered the gratefulness she had felt for growing up in a wizard family earlier this day. Maybe growing up in the Muggle world would actually have been better.

There was a lot of frustration in Harry's voice as he continued speaking:

"Although I think you all comprehended what I wanted to tell you, although everyone with a brain should be able to understand it, the Hogwarts Board of Governors still refused the removal of Divination from the curriculum. If I had not been able to convince the Chief Warlock to get a law through the Wizengamot that overruled them, this subject would probably have been taught forever simply because it is tradition for a wizarding school to offer Divination.

"You might now be wondering what I will teach you. If you hope that I will show you how to do whatever you want by snapping your fingers, I'll have to disappoint you. I do, however, believe that what I am going to teach you will be the most valuable thing you will learn your entire life. I will teach you to realise if you are studying a completely pointless subject. I will teach you how to frighten dementors without using a patronus charm, I will teach you how to use magic in ways you do not think are possible, and finally after my lessons you might be able to understand, how I can do whatever I want by snapping my fingers. I will teach you the methods of rationality."

Everyone in the audience looked puzzled. No one had ever heard of these methods of rationality, and they could not possibly allow you to frighten dementors. Sure, Harry had done that, but that was because he was a powerful and potentially dark wizard. Ginny, however, was not confused, she finally understood what Harry had really meant when he told her that she would understand what a rationalist was after some time in Hogwarts.

After a long pause, Harry started speaking again: "You might currently not believe me that rationality is more important than powerful magic, but I suggest you try it out. After all, it is impossible that my lessons are more useless than Divination, so it can only be an improvement for you. Divination was an elective starting in the third year, I will however start teaching students from their first year onwards if they wish to learn from me. It is a bit of extra work for you, but I would still recommend it to everyone. If you don't like my teaching, you can leave my lessons at any point in time. There is no use in trying to teach rationality to someone who is not willing to learn."

Ginny did not even have to consider. She immediately decided to sign up for the lessons. After all, it was Harry giving them. But besides that, what Harry said actually made so much sense that she would have probably even signed up to learn his way of thinking if someone else would have taught it.

"Before we can at last begin with the sorting, I have one last thing to tell you. I am the new head of house Slytherin and I would like to explain to you what will change in Slytherin under my influence. All first year students please listen carefully even if you have decided that you would never join Slytherin house."

On a normal day, the statement that a twelve year old Ravenclaw student was the new head of House Slytherin would have shocked everyone and probably produced an outrage at the Slytherin table, but after what had happened before people were just silently staring at Harry, waiting for what he would say next. Ginny, like everyone else, had expected Professor Slughorn to be the new head of House Slytherin and was now curious about what Harry would say next. After all, he was not even a Slytherin himself.

"There has been a lot of confusion about what House Slytherin is about in the past. The goal of the Houses of Hogwarts is to sort students by their dominating personality trait. The trait of Slytherin is ambition. Hating muggleborns has nothing to do with being ambitious or the values of House Slytherin. Sure, Salazar Slytherin did not like Muggleborns, but in his time this was true for the majority of wizards. The only reason most people in Slytherin do not like Muggleborns is that the sorting hat takes people's wishes into consideration. And because everyone believes Slytherin is about hating Muggles, people who hate Muggleborns choose to be in Slytherin, and other people choose other Houses even if they are ambitious. I will not tolerate discrimination based on blood status in my house. I encourage everyone who is truly ambitious to join Slytherin this year. If you would like, I will write a letter to your parents to explain the new policy of House Slytherin to them. That way, it might be easier for you to explain it to them. I don't want to be responsible for anyone of you getting disowned after all. That was all I had to say to you. We can now begin with the sorting."

 **Authors Notes**

The next chapter will go online on wednesday the 10th of june. I know that it is controversial whether Harry's unbreakable vow would allow him to teach rationality. I will try to explain why I think that he should be able to do so as soon as possible. However it will take a while since I don't want to write from his perspective. So Ginny will have to find out about the vow first. I have already wrote a bit about my opinion on this topic in this chapters draft thread on reddit, so if you are curious you can look there.


	4. Mirroring

Harry left the podium and walked back to the Ravenclaw table. Ginny thought about what he had said about House Slytherin. She had never considered going there, but with Harry as Head of House, this suddenly became a real option. Also, Harry had said that the Hat would take wishes into consideration. Maybe she was not doomed to end up in Gryffindor after all.

A loud clapping noise pulled Ginny out of her thoughts and she saw a girl walking to the Ravenclaw table. She realised that Professor McGonagall had started with the sorting and that she had missed at least one person already.

"Creevey, Colin!"

Pause.

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Darcy, Pearl!"

Pause.

"SLYTHERIN"

"Dursley, Dudley!"

Pause.

"GRYFFINDOR!"

"Graves, Magdalen"

Pause.

"RAVENCLAW!"

After a while Ginny's thoughts drifted away and she began to think about her own Sorting again. She really was unsure which House she would choose, if the Hat gave her a choice. She didn't think that she wanted to go to Hufflepuff. She came from a big family and loyal friends was not what she was really in need of. And only few people of importance had ever come from Hufflepuff. She also would have preferred not to go to Gryffindor, because there she would be constantly confronted with her elder siblings. She liked all of them well, but she preferred a clean start where she could find her own way, without her siblings intervening. Also, Harry was not linked to House Gryffindor like he was to Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Between those two houses she was really not sure, but it would probably be best to talk those two options through with the help of the Hat. After coming to this conclusion, Ginny started paying attention to the sorting again.

"Little, Justin!"

Pause.

"SLYTHERIN"

"Lovegood, Luna!"

Pause.

"HUFFLEPUFF"

"Moon, Eve!"

Pause.

"HUFFLEPUFF"

"Rogers, Timothy!"

Pause.

"SLYTHERIN"

"Smith, Zacharias!"

Pause.

"SLYTHERIN"

Other persons were called out and Sorted, but Ginny did not pay attention. Her own sorting came closer and closer and eventually she started getting nervous. A lot of her future depended on what would happen under the Sorting Hat and she started thinking everything through for a second time without coming to any new conclusions. Finally she heard Professor McGonagall's voice say:

"Weasley, Ginevra!"

After hearing her name, Ginny took place on the chair in front of the Staff Table and pulled the old hat over her head. The moment the hat rested on her head her nervousness was blown away. A few seconds later she heard a voice saying:

" _This is going to take a while."_

Although Ginny had known that the Sorting Hat would speak to her, nothing had prepared her for the feeling of communicating with it. She did not _hear_ the hat, she _thought_ it. It felt like her own thoughts, but in a different voice and she had no control over them. After the initial sensation was gone and her head was clear again, the hat continued.

" _There are a lot of possible options for you. I don't think that you belong into Hufflepuff. You will be loyal to your friends, most people are since they don't want to lose them, but you will not support your friends to the very end if you think their actions are stupid. Loyalty is not your dominating character trait, but Gryffindor, Ravenclaw and Slytherin are options we should discuss. Let's start with Gryffindor. You definitely don't fear danger. You are not the typical Gryffindor who would run into every dangerous situation without thinking about it, but you will stand up for what you believe even if it is risky."_

"I think I would prefer Ravenclaw or Slytherin", said Ginny

" _Why is that so? Your whole family was in Gryffindor, it is the most prestigious house, people will expect you to go there. Ah, I see you think that this Harry Potter boy would think better of you if you went in one of those houses."_

At first Ginny was confused how the Hat could know this, then she remembered that it could read her mind.

" _I have seen similar motives often before, although usually it is that someone wants to be in the same house as one of his friends. Let me make this clear, I will take your wishes into consideration and will usually send no one to a house where they wouldn't want to be, but I will not send you into a house just because someone else you like is there. Friendships at your age usually don't last forever and crushes almost never do. It would be very unwise to sort people based on those things. You will have to convince me with something else to not send you into Gryffindor."_

Ginny gave the hat a mental nod and then said, "OK let's talk about Ravenclaw. You said this was an option for me"

" _You value knowledge and not only because you want to impress that Potter boy with it. You actually enjoy finding out new things. You would find people who are like that in Ravenclaw."_

"OK and what about Slytherin? I bet you were unhappy every time you had to send someone who belonged to Slytherin somewhere else. I am sure you want to avoid that happening again, now that people are more willing to go there"

" _I was not unhappy, because I usually don't have feelings. However since I borrow most of my intelligence from the minds of the students I sit on I have now indeed become unhappy, since you thought of me as someone who has feelings. I don't know what is wrong with wizard children nowadays. For hundreds of years they have just accepted that a speaking hat is talking do them and not cared about how it feels. This is the second time something strange like this has happened to me in two years._

Ginny was quite surprised. She had not expected that she could change the Sorting Hat just by expecting something of it. She decided not to talk about this incident since it would have major potential for abuse.

" _Let us come back to your sorting. You want to achieve something in your life. You want to outshine your older brothers even though most of them are rather bright. And there is this Potter boy. You have set yourself the goal to seduce him and would even have been willing to base your choice of house on what you think he would prefer just because you think it would help you with your goal. You are clearly ambitious and willing to do things to achieve your goals. I think to decide whether Slytherin or Ravenclaw would suit you better you should tell me for what reason you seek knowledge?"_

"I like understanding new things, that is definitely a part of it. But I think mostly I want to learn things because they are useful. They help me make better decisions and plan my actions."

" _So you seek knowledge because it helps you to achieve your goals, that points more towards Slytherin than Ravenclaw. What do you want to do after you graduate from Hogwarts, besides marry Harry Potter?"_

"I want to become the most powerful witch I can possibly be. I don't want to stop learning after Hogwarts. Then I want to find some way to make money. I will probably use the knowledge I have gathered to invent some kinds of magical artefacts I can sell. Just taking a normal job will not give me the amount of money that I need to become an influential person. After I have achieved this I have every possibility open to me. I can decide to just live my quiet and happy or to seek further power and go into politics."

" _You have planned your future quite well for a girl of your age. Although most of your plans probably will not work out the way that you expect, you have shown true ambition. You did not just say that you want to become rich and powerful, but you have a clear idea on how to achieve these goals. I think you would really do better in Slytherin than in either of Gryffindor or Ravenclaw. Do you accept my decision to put you into Slytherin?"_

"Yes, but don't officially sort me just yet. Can you please wait another minute or two? Staying under the hat for a long time is seen as a sign that someone is a powerful witch or wizard. I think it will really improve my chances with Harry Potter."

" _You are a Slytherin indeed. You are not the first person to ask me this. A few other Slytherins have done so, but not many. I usually decline since I don't care about whether you achieve your ambition. I care about sorting. But currently I am happy that I sorted you correctly and I quite like this feeling, I will grant your request and wait before I proclaim you a Slytherin._

After that, the voice of the hat disappeared and Ginny sat there in silence for a while before the hat proclaimed:

"SLYTHERIN!"

Ginny stood up and walked towards the Slytherin table to join her new housemates. While walking, she scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Harry smiled at her, he looked rather happy with her decision. Ron did look very angry; he had a strong dislike for Slytherin and was proud to be from an all-Gryffindor family. Seeing him look at her like this made Ginny sad. She really hoped that her decision had not seriously damaged her relationship with him. Fred and George seemed to be neither happy nor unhappy with her decision. They had never taken the house rivalries very seriously, so she guessed they would not treat her any differently because she decided to be in Slytherin. Percy's look was hard to read, but she thought that he would support her decision. Now that she thought about it, the Hat had probably offered Percy Slytherin as well. He was very ambitious. He already planned to join the ministry after Hogwarts and she was sure that he would not be content with a badly paid position in some unimportant office like their father. She was sure that if Percy had put on the Sorting Hat today, he would have been in Slytherin as well.

She reached the Slytherin Table and sat down next to Timothy Rogers. The moment she sat down again, the Sorting Hat proclaimed "Gryffindor" and a small boy started walking to the Gryffindor table. She saw that all first years had been sorted now and an instance later, food appeared on the table in front of her. She started eating and began small talk with the other first years around her. It would be good to make some friends on among the first years, since she did not know anyone in House Slytherin. She was halfway through her first plate of food when she heard a shrieking sound from somewhere above her. A single owl was flying through the great hall of Hogwarts. It dropped a sealed parchment in front of Harry Potter and then left. Harry broke the seal looked at the parchment for a few seconds and smiled.

 **Authors Notes**

Thanks to everyone who sent me a proposal for a character on reddit. As you can see I have included quite a few of them into the story and will possibly add more later on. I can however neither confirm nor deny that I will stick a hundred percent to the background story you proposed. The next chapter will go online on Saturday the 20th of June.


	5. Opportunity Costs

Ginny tiredly pushed her way into the Hogwarts Great Hall, on the first day of class, the enormous room lit up with the fresh ambiance of the morning. The room was already lively and the air was filled with conversation. She blinked slightly, still exhausted - she had wondered endlessly yesterday about the contents of the mysterious letter Harry had been given at the Feast. Students usually only received their mail once a day at Hogwarts, and owls were never allowed to enter the Hall any other time of the day.

Luckily her first lesson would be Rationality, so she would be able to find out about the letter. Most first years would probably have preferred a lesson where they could finally start learning magic, but Ginny was happy enough to wait until the second period, when they had their first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson. She walked to the Slytherin table and sat down next to another first year girl. She tried to start a conversation with her but her attempt was met with rejection. The girl did not seem to be in a good mood, which astonished Ginny. She thought that all students would be exited on their first day of Hogwarts. Besides the first year girl, Ginny was surrounded by a group of people who Ginny estimated to be in their third or fourth year. The seemed to be close friends so Ginny did not try to join their conversation. After eating in silence for a while, she heard the fluttering of wings behind her. She looked upwards and saw dozens of owls flying through the Hall and dropping packages left and right. As a wizard-born she was used to getting her mail delivered by owl, but the picture of all the different looking owls in the sky was still beautiful. The Girl next to her however was clearly not used to the Wizarding postal system. Her jaw had dropped and a very confused expression crossed her face.

"Wizards usually get their post by owl," explained Ginny, thinking that this migh be a chance to get into a conversation with the Girl, but a moment later, something dropped out of the sky and landed on Ginny's plate. It was a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ , more precisely an ancient-looking owl carrying a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ , which she found somewhat confusing. Her parents subscribed to the _Daily Prophet_ , but could not afford more than one copy and in Hogwarts, news spread quickly, so it wasn't necessary to have your own copy.

She looked at the paper and saw that it had already been used. Her parents must have read it already and then sent it to her. It explained why Errol looked so exhausted, he whizzed through the air at top-speed to be here in time for the Hogwarts mail delivery. Something important must have happened that her parents did not want her to hear from second hand news. She would share the Prophet with her brothers later on. It probably only went to her, because the Slytherin table was closer to where Errol had entered the great Hall than the Gryffindor table. She pulled out the newspaper from under the owl and read the headlines.

" _AZKABAN ATTACKED_ "

" _DEMENTORS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND_ "

" _NO PRISONERS MISSING_ "

Her first thought was _'what?'_. Naturally following this, her second thought was that it must have been Harry. After all, rumours were that he had frightened a Dementor last year without even using a Patronus Charm. But why would he do that? The prisoners in Azkaban were evil, and now it would be a lot harder to stop them from escaping. Before she could think further about this, the door of the Great Hall suddenly burst open with an enormous strength. She looked at the door and saw a small girl entering the hall, walking towards the Ravenclaw table.

* * *

A bit out of breath Ginny entered the Rationality classroom. She had spent quite some time after Breakfast Discussing the Azkaban breakout with the other Slytherin first years, so she went off from the Great Hall later than she had planned. Fortunately Hogwarts had done nothing to sabotage her on the way to class so Harry was not yet there when she arrived. She sat down next to a skinny blonde boy with blue eyes. Because there was still some time left she decidet to start a conversation and said: "Hi, I'm Ginny. You were at the Sorting yesterday...you're Dudley, right?"

"Yeah," answered Dudley. He looked at her for a while, as if he wanted to say something else and then turned back to his food.

"You're a Muggleborn right? At least I don't know any wizarding family named Dursley. How do you like Hogwarts so far? Are you excited to finally learn magic?"

"Seems to be better than at home. And I sure am excited about learning to use magic."

"Not a very talkative guy, are you?"

"I'm not really used to talking to people. I didn't have many people to talk to."

Ginny considered, just then, asking him why, but decided not to question Dudley about his Muggle life for now. Perhaps it would be better not to prod around too much with what were clearly unhappy memories for him. "Well," she said, "I'm sure that's going to change now that you're in Hogwarts - but if you want people to talk to you, you should work on your communication skills. Right now it's hard to keep a conversation going with you, because all you do is answer questions."

"So what else should I do?"

"Maybe you should ask a question yourself. Right now I already know quite a bit about you, but you know nothing about me."

"Mhhm, okay. Are you Wizard born?"

"Yes, I come from quite an old pure blood Wizard family. Not that I think blood purity is important, like some other old families do."

"Why do they think it is important?"

"They think that pure-blood wizards are stronger and that the magic gets weaker if you marry Muggleborns. There is some evidence for that theory since lots of wizards of the old houses are quite strong, but there are also very strong Muggleborns. Hermione Granger is also Muggleborn and I heard that she is the strongest witch in the year above us. And one of the two most powerful wizards of our century was no pureblood as well."

"Who was he?" asked Dudley, but before she could answer a door opened and Harry entered the room. He took a few steps into the room and then said "Hello everyone, I'm Harry Potter - you can call me Professor," He smiled and then continued. "To be honest, I've wanted to do this since I was six, but I expected to have to wait until I was at least 18 to do it - and I certainly wasn't anticipating teaching at a school for magic. Anyway, my compliments to all of you on making the decision to attend this class. I congratulate you on that - but be honest - did any of you actually think the decision through properly? Maybe you just felt it would be a good thing to do and went through with that feeling. Well in this case your feeling was right, but in this class I'll show you how to judge whether your feelings _are_ right and whether to follow through with them. In this class you will learn how to make better decisions. So before I begin, does anyone have an idea on how to make good decisions?" he looked around at the not-entirely-silent hall before a hand shot up.  
Miss Weasley, you have a proposal?"

"Well you have to think if the result of the decision will benefit you. If you take this course, as an example, you would have to ask yourself if the content of this course will be helpful."

Harry nodded approvingly. "Indeed, looking at the expected benefit of an action is something you should do. However not everything that gives you a benefit is good. If I would allow you to choose between getting a Sickle and a Galleon from me, both choices would give you a benefit, but the galleon would be significantly better. So when considering options, don't just think 'that's good,' but _compare it to the alternatives_! They might be better." He cleared his throat before continuing.

"This concept, called 'opportunity cost,' means you need to ask yourself the question 'good compared to what?' Well, a Sickle is certainly good, but 'good compared to a Galleon?' Now the Sickle isn't a good choice. Of course, you don't always get a decision that's so clear-cut. Even if uncertainty isn't involved. In this example it's easy to know that a galleon is worth more than a sickle, but if you have to choose between other things than just money is harder to decide which one actually gives you more utility. I'll show you right now."

Harry took out his pouch and started to pull out various sorts of sweets, some Sickles and Knuts, and lots of other things like books, potion ingredients and things from Zonko's Joke Shop. He muttered a spell and things started to fly through the classroom.

Murmuring started, some people reached out their hands. "Don't touch anything before I say so, believe me you will regret it." Harry said sharply. "You will have the chance to acquire some of these wonderful things, but not all of them. You will be able to choose, between two groups of items several times. You will get the things you choose and you won't have to give them back after class, so choose wisely. I want you to write down why you preferred the things you took over the others. You can start now, all you have to do is say if you want the left or the right pile."

In front of Ginny lay two chocolate frogs on the one side and ten sickles on the other side.

For an instant Ginny thought about taking the sweets since chocolate frogs where one of her favourites, but then she realised, that she could buy way more than two chocolate frogs with 10 sickles.

"Right pile," she said, and an instant later the frogs vanished. It was a bit cruel to see your favourite sweets vanish before you and she decided to buy herself at least three chocolate frogs with the money she just got. Her next choice was between three boxes of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans and some Acid Pops on one side and 5 sickles on the other side. This time the sweets were worth more, but Ginny did not like acid pops and since the Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans alone where less than 5 sickles she went with the money again. The third choice was more complicated since this time there was no money on either side. She had to choose between a dungbomb and three chocolate frogs. Ginny estimated that a dungbomb would be cheaper than the frogs and she would prefer the sweets anyway. She had almost started speaking before she remembered that Dungbombs were not allowed at Hogwarts and Fred and George would probably give her way more than three chocolate frogs if she could get them one, so she took the dungbomb instead. The next time Ginny choose the potion ingredients over some more sweets and then the standard book of spells grade 2 to 7 over 2 sickles.

After that no new things appeared in front of her. She looked around and saw that most of her classmates had acquired lots of sweets and some money. Rarely anyone had chosen potion ingredients or books.

Harry, after looking bemusedly at some of the options resumed speaking. "Alright, now that everyone has finished, please hand in your papers. I'll read them by next lesson and will give you some individual feedback if I think it will be helpful. For now, I'll just explain some general things you could have done. First of all this was a rather easy task since you only had to choose between objects. If you have to decide whether to practise for the next lesson or meet with friends things get far more complicated. We will come to these problems in a later lesson. If you have to choose between material objects, a good way to start is to think how much they cost. If one thing is worth significantly more than the other, even if you prefer the first one you will usually be better off taking the second one and selling it. However you also have to consider that this will take you time. You can usually also put a monetary value on your time, by asking yourself how much you would earn if you work during that time, this approach however does not work well with Hogwarts students since there is little opportunity for you to earn any money…"

Harry went on explaining different things you could do to adjust the monetary value of things to get a better result than by simply comparing how much the good would cost in a shop. Ginny was happy to find out, that she had thought of most of them. The only thing she had not thought about was that things she could use now would have a higher relative value than things she only needed later.

Harry had explained that this was only partially true in the wizard world since interest rates were not common in the financial system. However, he said, it was still relevant for them, because they would have access to a lot more money when they started working after Hogwarts. So having a Galleon now would be more useful for them than having a Galleon in ten years. After finishing his explanation Harry let them choose between different objects for a second time.

After that he told them that in real life you often were not absolutely sure what the result of an action would be so in that case you needed to work with probabilities.

He then started to teach them some basic math or what the standard Hogwarts curriculum would label "advanced Arithmancy". Most of her classmates were on a lower level than Ginny, so it was quite easy for her. Some of them however had serious trouble following Harry, and Ginny thought that it was a great idea of Harry to give everyone sweets and money before starting with this. Had he not done that, the classroom would probably have been a lot emptier. After the lesson had finished Ginny left and started walking to the classroom where her next lesson, Defence Against the Dark Arts, would take place.

To her astonishment all other first years and even the second years were headed in the same direction. For a while she thought this was a coincidence, but in the ever-changing castle of Hogwarts, you usually only had to go the same way as someone else if you wanted to go to the exact same place.

Ginny turned towards Harry and asked "What class do you have next?"

He paused, briefly looking at the swarm of students all heading in the same direction. "Defence Against the Dark Arts with Professor Lockhart. You?"

 **Authors Note**

The next chapter will go online on Sunday July the 5th. After that I will have more time again and move back to a faster updating schedule.


	6. The Defence Professor Part 1

Ginny was sitting in a huge classroom together with the entire first and second year of Hogwarts students. It was more of an auditorium than a usual classroom, with the students sitting in a half circle in ascending rows around a stage with a single desk and a chair on it. Ginny was currently in the middle of a discussion with Harry and Hermione about what exactly Lockhart could have thought he was doing by teaching the first and the second year students together. As far as she knew this had never been done before and she could not imagine how Lockhart planned to teach something that was useful for all of them, considering that most of the second years were already battle hardened by Professor Quirrell's armies and she had not even cast a single spell in her life. Hermione and Harry couldn't think of how this lesson could work out either and expressed some scepticism about Professor Lockhart's ability as a teacher. Harry had also said that if the lesson went as he expected, Professor McGonagall might try an attempt on his life later today, but Ginny hadn't understood what that meant and when she asked Harry about it he told her to just wait and see how the day would unfold. A moment later Professor Lockhart finally entered the room. The instant he entered Harry raised his hand.

"Hello everyone, my name is Professor Lockhart, but you all know that of course. I see that one of you has a question already, can't wait to ask me for an autograph, can you? But that will have to wait until after the lesson. Where was I? Ah yes, most of you will of course know me as the author of …"

"Excuse me, Professor," said Harry Potter, "but could you please explain the rationale behind merging together the lessons for first and second years? My time is too valuable to be wasted with a useless lesson."

Professor Lockhart looked at Harry for a brief moment and then said "You must be Harry Potter. I must say that is no proper way of talking to a professor, but I forgive you. After all, you have some minor fame as well and that probably went to your head. Be assured, Mr. Potter, that there are a lot of things you can learn from me and if you pay attention you might at some point become a real celebrity yourself. You have the potential. But if you must know, I combined the first and the second year class because I have many other duties besides teaching in Hogwarts. I receive more than two hundred letters from fans every week and those have to be answered. For my lesson plan, the minor differences in the skill level between you will not be a problem. And now, let's start the lesson with a little test to see how much you know already.

 _A test? What in Merlin's name could he be thinking_? thought Ginny. _I haven't had a single lesson yet, how could I pass a_ test _?_ She looked at the paper that had landed in front of her and read the first question. It was "What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favourite colour?" The next one was "What is Gilderoy Lockhart secret dream?" She scanned the rest of the test and the questions were all similar. She raised her hand and when Professor Lockhart asked her, what she wanted, she said "No one told us that we were supposed to read all the textbooks in advance. I haven't even looked into any of them yet, since I didn't know which one to start with. And even if I had read them, the things you ask for in these questions don't seem like something worth memorizing"

"Miss Weasley, I expected most of you to have read my books long before you started at Hogwarts. They have been at the top of the Daily Prophet's best seller lists for months, after all. Who in this class has read the books, please raise your hand." Ginny looked around and saw that every girl besides herself and Hermione, and about half of the boys had raised their hand.

"You see, Miss Weasley, you will have to do some catch-up reading to come to the same level as your classmates. That is true for all of you who did not raise their hands."

"No they won't," said Harry. "I _have_ read your books, or more precisely the first 50 pages of _Gadding with Ghouls_ , which, as I had to find out, is not a textbook designed for teaching purposes, but a mediocre fantasy novel. Do you plan to actually teach us something this lesson or are we supposed to hear about your great adventures for the next hour?"

"Mister Potter you clearly are out of your mind. You cannot talk to a Professor like that. But very well, I had planned this for later in the year, but if you think you do not need to learn from my example how to deal with dangerous magical creatures I will have to teach you how wrong you are."

He stepped out of the room and a few seconds later returned with a huge rectangular object. Ginny could not see what it was, because a black blanket had been placed over it. Lockhart put the object on his desk and waited for a while. Then, with a quick movement, he pulled the blanket away with his left hand and with his right hand he waved his wand and said "Alohomora".

A second later, tiny blue creatures started to fly out of the cage.

Two seconds later all students who had been in an army had drawn their wands and cries of "Somnium" and "Stupefy" were filling the air. Ginny had instinctively drawn her own wand, but since she didn't know any spells she just stood there and watched. A few pixies had dropped on the ground, but the ones hit by Somnium spells continued to fly and started to approach the students in the first row. Ginny saw shields going up from some students, while Harry, Hermione, one guy who from his looks must be a Malfoy and a few other students she did not recognize continued to cast stupefy. About fifteen seconds after the pixies had been released, all of them were lying on the ground unconsciously.

"Oh well, you are a bit further in your education then I expected. Of course I would also have been able to defeat all those pixies on my own in my second year, so I should have expected that you had a chance."

"I have my doubts that you could defeat those pixies right now," said Harry. "Just because you are a terrible teacher, it does not, of course, mean that you cannot be a strong wizard, but you do not seem to be very competent at all. Let me perform a test."

He slowly raised his wand, pointed it at Lockhart and said "Stupefy". Lockhart was hit by the red bolt without trying to evade or casting a counterspell.

Ginny looked at Harry with a shocked expression on her face and said, "Harry, you just stunned a professor."

"I just stunned the defence professor and I should not have been able to do that. I tried to stun Mad-Eye Moody last year and I put a lot of effort in planning an ambush on him and I still could not hit him with a normal stupefy."

"Why on earth would you try to stun Mad-Eye Moody?"

"That doesn't matter now. What matters is that no semi-competent fighting wizard would have been hit by that spell, in fact everyone who was in an army last year could have easily dodged it. If Lockhart was really who he pretends to be, this would not have been a challenge for him."

"So you think he's an impostor? But he is really famous for fighting against the dark arts. Do you think that someone else might have done those things and he just memory-charmed them and acted as if he was the hero?"

"That is one possibility, but it seems unnecessary complex. I have another theory, but I don't want to explain it now. We will find out if I am right shortly. As soon as Mr. Lockhart wakes up, I will pay the Headmistress a visit. Hermione and Ginny, I would like you to accompany me, so that I have a witness from both years who can support my cause against Professor Lockhart."

* * *

Harry, Hermione and Ginny entered the Headmistresses office. Ginny looked around and saw Professor McGonagall sitting in front of a desk which was surrounded by lots of strange looking devices, which made all kinds of strange sounds. Professor McGonagall looked up from the scroll she was reading and said with a confused voice "What is this about, Mr Potter?

"Headmistress I demand that you fire the Defence Professor."

" _What?_ Mr Potter, Gilderoy Lockhart is one of the most skilled fighters against the dark arts and the most competent defence professor we could hope to get since Alastor insist that he does not want to teach. Do I have to remind you what I said to you last year about you not getting my defence professors into trouble before the end of the year?"

"Professor, I have strong evidence that Gilderoy Lockhart is not who he pretends to be. I believe that he has not done any of the things he claims he has. In fact I believe that no one has done them and he just made everything up. I mean, nothing of what he did was in Britain, and the ties between the wizarding communities of different countries are not that strong. Has anyone ever checked if the people he claims to have saved even exist? Or do you think someone in magical Britain would have noticed if you made up heroic deeds about what you did somewhere in Europe?"

"Now that you say that, I am not certain that Professor Lockhart ever submitted any proof of his skill... and it is true that he did not seem to be the brightest student when he was in Hogwarts. But that doesn't mean that he is an impostor. And as you should know Mr. Potter, Gilderoy was checked by Alastor and Dumbledore himself last year and they did not report that anything was wrong with him."

"Yes, but I explicitly asked Moody to ignore everything Lockhart might have done which had nothing to do with the thing he checked him for. I suggest we just ask him to come here and tell us, what he found out last year. And in the meantime, Ginny can explain to you how our first defence lesson went."

"Excuse me but I would really like to know what went on with Professor Lockhart last year," said Ginny.

"That is nothing that first year students have to be concerned about", said Professor McGonagall

"Harry was a first year student last year and he was even involved in the whole thing."

"As you might have noticed by now, Miss Weasley, Mr. Potter is not what you would call an ordinary child. But very well. I don't know why we should make a big secret out of it now. When Bellatrix Black escaped from Azkaban last year, we were worried that Voldemort might have been involved in this and that he might possess Mr. Lockhart, who recently was showing significant magical powers that no one expected of him. But our suspicions were wrong. Now could you please explain me what went on during that lesson? And you, Mr. Potter, please fetch Alastor."

Ginny told Professor McGonagall about the lesson and Hermione added a few things, which she seemed to remember in surprising detail. Shortly after they finished, Harry and a man who appeared to be in his late fifties arrived via floo network. The man who had to be Mad-Eye Moody had scars all over his face and a strange blue glowing eye.

"Ah, Alastor," said Professor McGonagall. "There seem to be some questions about the identity of our latest defence professor. Could you tell us what you found out about him last year?"

"I know nothing about him. He is an Occlumens. I don't know if he is a perfect one, because Dumbledore didn't let me try to break him. He said that there was a better way to find out what we wanted to know and just summoned the sorting hat. The hat confirmed that Lockhart was not possessed and so the thing was done for us. But if you really want to know who this guy is, just bring him here. I am sure that I will get it out of him, even if he is a perfect occlumens."

"Then let's fetch him," said Professor McGonagall. "He is probably in his office right now."

"Actually I brought him here and told him to wait outside," said Harry. "Let me just get him."

He left and returned a few seconds later with Professor Lockhart, who immediately flinched when he saw Mad Eye Moody.

"I see that you remember me," said Moody. "You can either tell us the truth about yourself right now or you can try to prove that you are a tough wizard and see if you can withhold the information from me when I want to get it."

"Please don't hurt me. I'll explain everything. I lied. I made all the stories up. I wrote some stories for fun during my Hogwarts years and found out that I was kind of a good writer. But it is so hard to make a living writing books so I figured that way more people would buy my books if they think I had really done all that. It wasn't hard to come up with stories that no one would notice to be false if they didn't try hard to check the facts. The hardest thing was to become an occlumens, but I knew I had to do that or someone would find out about my secrets sooner or later. After all, there are people who routinely try to read the mind of every person they meet."

"But why did you decide to teach at Hogwarts?" asked Ginny. "Wasn't that really stupid? People were bound to find out that you knew nothing about defence against the dark arts."

"I did not take into account that David Monroe was last year's Defence Professor. Frankly I think I would not have done worse than some other defence professors in the last years if half of what the Daily Prophet wrote about Hogwarts defence professor problems is true."

"Well, Mr Lockhart, you are hereby fired from your position as defence professor of Hogwarts and I shall inform the public about you as well," said Professor McGonagall in a resigned tone. "I suggest you pack your things and leave the country as soon as you can. Some people will not be happy when they hear about you, and since you are not even able to defend yourself against a second year student, you might be in trouble."

"But who will teach defence against the dark arts now?" asked Ginny.

"Don't worry about that, Miss Weasley. I do have another person in mind. I hoped I did not have to ask him, but I feared that it would come to this sooner or later . Miss Weasley can you please leave the room? I have something to discuss with Alastor and Mr. Potter. Miss Granger, you can stay as well."

Ginny left the room, feeling a bit jealous that Hermione was allowed to stay while she had to leave, but after all she _was_ the Girl who Revived. Apparently as a child you had to do something considered impossible if you wanted adults to take you seriously. She wondered if there was another thing besides dying and reviving and slaying the most feared dark lord of all time a child could do in order to be taken into secret meetings with the headmistress, but she could not think of anything.

* * *

 **Authors Notes:** The next chapter will go online on Wednesday July the 15th


	7. The Defence Professor Part 2

On the morning of the second day of the Hogwarts school year the Headmistress stood behind the podium of the Great Hall of Hogwarts ready to give a morning announcement. The whole hall was looking at her full of expectation. Of course they had all heard the rumours about the first defence lesson of Professor Lockhart and were now eager to find out the truth about this event, so when Professor McGonagall began to speak, the hall went silent instantly.

"As some of you might have heard there was an incident involving the Defence Professor yesterday. I will not go into details about that since you will be able to read about it in the Daily Prophet shortly, but I will say that the Defence Professor was not who he pretended to be and had done little of what he claimed to have. Since Professor Lockhart had never actually done anything that qualified him to be a Defence Professor I had to release him from this position and was forced to find a replacement. Fortunately I have gotten quite some practice with finding new Defence Professors over the last years and therefore I already managed to find you a new teacher, actually two new teachers. Please welcome Professor Unterberg and Professor Moody."

A murmur went through the hall as the second name was announced. Mad Eye Moody was a famous veteran of the first wizarding war and his skill was undoubtable, but people said that his Eye was not the only thing that was mad about him and that his years of fighting dark wizards had left him totally paranoid, seeing enemies everywhere. Ginny was confused by the announcement. It was unheard of that two people were teaching the same topic together at Hogwarts, but that was not what confused her. When Ginny had asked her about the new Defence Professor yesterday, Professor McGonagall had said that she hoped that she did not have to ask whomever she intended to ask. Was that referring to Moody or this Mr. Underberg? As far as she knew Moody was a long-time friend of Dumbledore and therefore probably also of Professor McGonagall so she would probably have no problem asking him to teach at Hogwarts. Then her comment probably referred to Professor Unterberg. But why ask him at all if Mad Eye Moody agreed to teach? Moody would surely be a competent Professor and able to teach the classes on his own. Sure people had started questioning his sanity after some incidents in the recent years, but people had called Dumbledore Insane as well and he was Headmaster, so that was no reason why Moody could not teach on his own. What about this Professor Unterberg then? Ginny knew nothing about him and given his name he was probably not from Britain but from somewhere in the Germanic parts of Europe. Moody and Unterberg had now entered the Hall and were walking towards the teachers table. Ginny took a close look at Unterberg and saw a man with blonde hair who seemed to be in his late forties. She was sure that she had never seen him before. The two new teachers had now reached the podium in front of the teachers table and Professor Unterberg began to speak.

"I am sure that some of you wonder why I have been chosen to teach defence against the dark arts here at Hogwarts since none of you has ever heard of me. In a way I am exactly who was intended to teach you this year, for I am the one who actually did what Mr. Lockhart claimed to have done. He heard of my deeds and approached me under the pretence of wanting to write a book about my adventures. That was not even a lie since he did write multiple books about them after he obliviated me and presented them as his own."

"That is what happens to you if you are not careful", interrupted him Mad Eye Moody. "Constant vigilance!"

"Thank you for your advice, Mr. Moody. I will certainly be more careful in the future. Anyway, luckily Mr Lockhart was not very talented in obliviation, so parts of my memories could be restored and my skills have not been affected by his spells. I think I will be able to teach you well and I look forward to it. It is certainly the most interesting thing I have done in many years."

That can't be true, thought Ginny. Lockhart told us that he made up everything he wrote about, so there was no one who had really done this. She considered the possibility that Lockhart lied about that part, and came to the conclusion that this was a possibility, but less likely than the new Professor being someone who did not want his true identity to be known and needed a cover story, after all that was not uncommon for Defence Professors. She planned to ask Harry about the new Defence Professors when she met him the next time, but doubted that he would tell her anything. Before she could think further about that Moody began to speak.

"Just to get this clear I do not look forward to teaching you lot. I only agreed to help out Professor McGonagall. I will only do a little teaching to share some of my experience in fighting dark wizards with you, so that some of you might last longer than a week when the next wizarding war comes. I will also supervise the army battles this year. I will do it a bit differently than Professor Quirrell did last year. For example I will not choose the generals myself. Everyone who wants to be a general can sign up and the selection will be done based on the results of some tests you will have to undergo. The test will give you points. After the tests are completed all students will be allowed to vote for one general and every vote you get will also give you some points. In addition to that everyone who voted for you will also be assigned to your army, however if your number of supporters exceeds the size of your army the remainder will be randomly distributed among the other armies. The first test will take place next week and you will be told about it in your next defence lesson."

Moody stepped away from the podium and Ginny began to process the new information. She definitely wanted to be a general next year, so her first thought was to immediately start trying to get as many people as possible to vote for her. On a second thought however that did not necessarily seem to be the best cause of action, considering that everyone she convinced to vote for her would also be likely to end up in her army so ideally she would want only skilled students to vote for her. After thinking the whole thing through for a while she came to the conclusion that waiting to approach other students would give her time to find out who was skilled and who wasn't and would also give her a better picture about how strongly she was dependent on votes and how much points she would be able to score through the tests. On the other hand there was probably a significant first mover advantage in trying to get people to vote for you. It would be much harder to convince somebody who already planned to vote for someone else than someone who had no clue on whom he wanted to vote for. She also realised that she could promise some potential voters that she would make them into lieutenants to get their vote. In the end she decided to immediately start approaching others, but save the promise of becoming a lieutenant for later. She was quite confident in herself and thought that she would not need a major amount of votes to become a general and it was still possible that not more than three students would even apply to be a general, but becoming a general in the first place was significantly more important to her than having a strong army and the possibilities to find out who was strong in battle and who was not were limited anyway.

In the evening of the same day Ginny sat on a comfortable black leather sofa in the Slytherin common room next to Pearl Darcy. She had not been able to get a casual conversation going with her so far, as the other girl blocked every attempt she made. The rest of the day had been more successful. She had started to take notes on how fast her classmates were able to learn spells during charms, to get a better picture of their abilities. She had also gotten Dudley Dursley to vote for her. That had been easy since she had been talking to him a couple of times during the two days they were at Hogwarts already and from how he acted she was probably the first person that had been friendly to him in many years. Since her attempts to get into a conversation with Pearl had failed and she had the feeling that this was not due to her being in a bad mood but because she was just not interested in small talk, Ginny now approached to topic she wanted to talk about directly.

"Pearl, do you plan on joining an army this year?"

"Why do you want to know that?" replied Pearl in a suspicious tone.

"I plan to become a general and would like to have you in my army."

"You mean you would like me to vote for you, why should I do that? I could try to become a general myself or vote for someone else."

"If you want to be a general yourself then I will not try to convince you to do otherwise, but if you don't want to be a general, you have to side with someone. You can of course wait and see how the candidates do in the tests first, but I will value it highly if you decide to vote for me now, before it is clear how good my chances are."

"Why should I care what you value highly? If you are not completely stupid you will use anyone in your army to their fullest potential no matter when they decided to vote for you or whether they decided to vote for you at all."

"Of course I will, and I already have something in mind for you. I don't know you very well, but you did seem like you were good at magic in the few lessons we had together. You practised concentrated and did not engage in any conversation. I think you don't work very well in teams. In the armies you will have to work in teams, no matter if you join my army or any other, but I will not make you work in teams unless it is necessary and there will be tasks where one skilled fighter can work alone. If you join my army I will give you the opportunity to work on your own as often as possible."

"You can promise me lots of things now, but no one will be able to hold you responsible for them if you break your promises."

"Sure, no one can, but that is true for every other general who might promise you anything, and If I don't stay true to my promises you can simply betray me; traitors were allowed last year and I am sure they will be allowed again this year. I was the first one to approach you, I promised you an attractive position in my army, what better do you expect to get from any other general?"

"I guess I won't get anything better. Very well, I will vote for you as my general."

"Great", said Ginny. She smiled and pulled out a paper. "Please sign on this list, that way I can show anyone that you cannot be trusted if you decide to switch alliances again."

"A clever move," replied Pearl and signed on the list below Dudley's name. She took a look at the headline of the list and said "Boggard Division, I like this name."

 **Authors Notes Update**

I have been far more busy in the last moth than i expected to, so that is why there were no updates in the recent time. The story is not discontinued, I will start writing again, however, I am currently not able to say when.


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